07 May 2008

An Elegant Linux

Got all excited a week ago, as my favorite Linux distro, Ubuntu, had finally released their latest long-term support version - 8.04 "Hardy Heron." My enthusiasm quickly flew south when I found the Live CD wouldn't even boot on my bog-standard Dell E520 desktop (a model that Dell itself sells with Ubuntu preinstalled). Further reading on the Ubuntu support forums revealed numerous complaints about not booting, poor performance, etc... Very disappointing.

So I turned to an Ubuntu derivative from a group of primarily European developers named Linux Mint that I'd previously experimented with on my laptop. The latest Linux Mint is based off of Ubuntu 7.10 and installs & runs like a charm. The Linux Mint team has also done an absolutely smashing job with the interface design / configuration, choice of std. applications, and audio/video codec support. Beautiful, elegant, and it. Just. Works.

High recommended.

(Oh, and yes - I know I haven't posted in a while. Life was just extra busy in April :)

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Did you checksum the Ubuntu .iso image you downloaded and run the media verification from the boot menu? Image or media defects are usually the cause of boot problems.

If the machine completely failed to boot at all, and did not even drop you to a busybox prompt, it's almost certainly a media issue.

David said...

Yeah, that was my first thought, too - which was confirmed by browsing some posts at ubuntuforums.com.

But then I encountered a bunch of posts about problems with 8.04 after install - booting, XWindows, stuff about the scheduler... Kinda put me off.

I'm sure I'll revisit 8.x, but right now I know 7.10 runs & runs well on my H/W. So I'll be waiting a few months for whatever patches, etc... that will come out for Hardy.